Posts by zoluvan

Viral marketing, viral advertising and marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networking services and other technologies to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives. Cloverfield is a good example because it draws viral marketing to catch many people into the theaters by keeping its viewers in the dark and shrouding itself in mystery before its release or before anything . The marketing is in relation to transmedia as it brings the movie onto different platforms or other various media. For example, the Internet and manga, a Japanese graphic novel, are considered as well as fans or moviegoers that speculate when the pieces are present and come together. The viral marketing about the monster movie made itself different from other types as it focused on the Slusho drink and its fictional makers, Tagruato than actual characters from the movie. This move had many to think they play an important role within the movie’s story-line. The marketing ploy’s beginnings started with a teaser trailer during the viewing of Transformers that did not say much about the movie. The trailer had some shaky cam footage of people partying and then to panicking as debris including a decapitated head of The Statue of Liberty starts flying and ended with a release date. There is also the official site called 1-18-08.com, which showed a collection of time coded pictures. These photos have characters from the movie, a sea incident and random Japanese people. It provides visitors to interact with them by moving the pictures and organizing them. New images have been updated to the site between 2007 and 2009 and up until early 2012 has the site have been removed. The drink Slusho! contributed to this marketing campaign as well as the fictional Tagruato company, adding more to the movie’s mythos. These two companies have also made cameos or referenced in J.J. Abrams other movie and TV works. Slusho had appeared in Abrams’ produced show Alias, while Tagrauto was mentioned in a TV spot for his first Star Trek film. Slusho! has a colorful website that definitely contrasts with the rest of the pre-movie information by its tone and feel. The site is littered with anime/cartoonish characters,...

The Slender Man is a horror internet phenomenon that have spread throughout the internet by ARGs and now beyond into the movie and gaming industry. Slender Man is a mythical creature depicted as a tall, thin, humanoid figure wearing a black suit and red tie and has a bank pale face. According to the legend, it can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages protruding from his back. Its height is depicted in between six and fifteen feet tall. Depending on the interpretations of the myth, the creature may cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, coughing fits known as “slendersickness”, photograph and video distortions. Slender Man has a number of abilities as well. It has the ability to camouflage, most notably the business suit which signifies a person of high status or rank and can blend in from a distance. It also can camouflage well among trees too especially when using his tentacles/multiple limbs ability. It has the ability of mind control, relationships with children whether by brainwashing, kidnapping or stalking them, fire or pyrokinesis, body mutilation, and selective visibility or the ability to choose who sees. The Slender Man has many connections or similarities to other mythological creatures. It has characteristics similar to faeries from traditional folklore, which have wings and vary in size and be kind, mischievous or even cruel. These traits that faeries and Slender Man have in common are they’re known to kidnap children, to disguise themselves and other things, to eat people, to cause disease to whomever makes contact, put people in a trance or under their control, visible only to certain people, teleportation, and trick humans into some sort of trap. There are other regions in the world that probably added or inspired to the Slender mythos. German lore has the poem, Schlankwald which translates approximately as Slim Forest, which describes a forest guardian who takes children and hunts who invade wooded territory. Another is Der Grossman or The Tall Man which is described as a fairy of the Black Forest who takes away bad children who entered the forest at night, and stalk them until the child confessed their wrongdoings to a parent. From Eastern Europe, The Tall Man is...